Which is more profitable?

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/10/kindle-numbers-traditional-publishing.html

One author's experience with selling e-books through his publisher and through his self-published kindle sales. He shares numbers--both e-books sold by title, and his income from those sales.

I wonder if his experience is similar to others'  or different?  And how many authors can make that comparison at all.

Comments

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

What I thought was most interesting is how many comments referenced the value of paying for a good cover for your ebook. :P

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Seriously? People look at e-book covers? Where? o_O

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

You prompted me to go read the comments--there's a lot more there than there were last night. I didn't see a lot about covers.

I did see the advice that LSI gives a better deal than Lulu or Createspace if you expect to sell more than a few dozen books.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Lightning Source requires you to supply your own ISBNs, though, which is tremendously expensive. Ten ISBNs costs you $275: if you're only planning on publishing one book, that's a hefty fee to make back. If you're planning on publishing more than 10 books in your life, you can either choose to shell out $275 again or you can go to the next block they offer... which is a hundred. For $995.00.

I don't know about you, but as a small business-person, $1000 is a hefty out-lay for 100 ISBNs. I'm not sure I'll put out 100 books, even, so what do I do with the overage? I've seen people chip in together to buy a block of ISBNs, but that creates paperwork, overhead and negotiation issues.

Both Lulu and Createspace supply their own ISBNs. One less headache.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Wow, ISBNs are expensive!

Though I'm looking at Fireborn, and now the #fridayflash stories I'm doing, and thinking that I may well have at least two books worth of stuff relatively soon, that is "already published" and therefore hard to sell to traditional print publishers. Which makes me look at the prospect of using up 10 ISBNs a bit differently.

Can a writer sell an already-bought ISBN to another writer, or do writers have to get together to buy them to start out with?

And thanks for sharing all this! I know it had to take you some time to learn it.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

ISBNs are registered to a publisher, not a writer. They can't be transferred. (In the case of Lulu or Createspace, THEY are the listed publisher, even though technically it's self-published.)

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Eww. Sounds like a bunch of wasteful paperwork. Is this system designed to do anything useful, or just create an in-group that has privileges others just don't get?

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

You also have to register as a publisher before you can purchase blocks of ISBNs. I have a block of 100. I can't remember exactly what I paid for publisher registration, but I think it was another $250. You only have to do that once, but it's still a chunk of change.

(And don't get me started on UPCs...)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I didn't know that about the registration fee. *shaking head*

That's the #1 thing I didn't like about Lightning Source. It's set up so that it encourages you to become a small press publisher. Because you end up with either too few ISBNs... and have to spend more to get more... or you end up with SO many that you think, "I might as well do something with these to recoup my costs."

I don't want to become a small press publisher. And I found Lightning Source's customer service kind of annoying anyway. :P